The Great Acting Blog: “Achieve Something Extraordinary”

The Great Acting Blog: “Achieve Something Extraordinary”

If you have no conception of yourself as an artist, if you have no vision of the results you want, if you’re not working to please yourself, then you must be unhappy. You’re whole life is about trying to satisfy other people in order to get the opportunity to work, and this task will grind you down, and remove any joy from your efforts. And when you do work, it will not fulfill you because it probably won’t be the kind of work you want to do (even if you haven’t articulated to yourself what the work you want to do is).

Create a vision of the kind of actor you want to be, then master the techniques and establish the aesthetics to ensure you become that actor. Set your own agenda, don’t let yourself be just another actor who gets shoved around. Stand for something. Decide who you’re going to work with, don’t merely hope something comes along.

Ask yourself: what will you fight for? What will you absolutely not compromise on?

Do you think Mike Leigh makes any old film just because somebody hired him to? Do you think David Mamet just goes with the flow and writes whatever play he’s been told to write? Look at Buster Keaton. Look at Woody Allen. See how something extraordinary can be achieved.

 

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